International Day of Sign Languages

The proposal for International Day of Sign Languages came from the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) — 135 national associations representing 70 million deaf people’s human rights worldwide — and marks the date that the WFD was established in 1951 as an advocacy organisation which seeks to preserve of sign languages and deaf culture as pre-requisites to the realisation of the human rights of deaf people, and to raise awareness of the issues deaf people face in their everyday lives.